Places Around Maastricht: the Foodmaker

Type of Place: Café
Location: Gubbelstraat 8, 6211 CE Maastricht NL, Near the Gemeente Maastricht
Website

The Foodmaker is a medium sized, modern looking café located conveniently near the Maastricht Town Hall. It is open seven days a week: from 8:00 to 19:00 on Monday-Wednesday and Friday, 8:00 to 21:00 on Thursday, 9:00 to 18:00 Saturday, and 12:00 to 18:00 on Sunday. They served breakfast and lunch for both eat in and “take away” in addition to a pleasant selection of coffee and smoothie beverages. The macchiato latte is my favorite and will run you 2,55 euro; not unreasonable compared to other similar shops in Maastricht.

For the new expat or traveler, the biggest selling point of Foodmakers is their free wi-fi. To my knowledge it is the only café with free wi-fi in the center of Maastricht. They are rarely busy (lunch is their busy time), so it’s easy to hang out with a coffee for a few hours. The shop cunningly has no outlets available, so remember to charge up before you arrive.

Movers & Carpeting

Last Tuesday our movers finally dropped off the furniture and boxes we had shipped from the US. I created as much space as possible for them to move things into but it was still something of a zoo, as you can see:

I have to say I’m thrilled to finally have our futon and coffee table. They fit nicely in the living room and we even have space for an extra chair if we decide we want one. The futon did arrive missing a couple of bolts, but we were able to jury rig something. It hasn’t fallen apart yet.

The other bit of news is that carpeting was finally put into the loft and we got the bed set up. Its so nice to sleep on a real bed again.

Episode 4 of Maastricht Minutiae

Happy Mother’s Day! and more on this two week episode of Maastricht Minutiae. Listen to it here.

Topics Explored are:
- Queen’s Day celebrations in Maastricht
- A visit to the emergency room
- The movers dropped off our stuff and other housing stuff
- Talking about the IND and immigration paperwork
- IKEA & Kringloopwinkels

Enjoy!

AiMS: Americans in Maastricht Society Inaugual Meeting (and cookies)

I baked my first batch of chocolate chip cookies since moving to Maastricht this week, but it wasn’t just for Dan’s sake. We attended the first ever meeting for a new expat group in Maastricht on Tuesday (which also happened to be Liberation Day here in the Netherlands). It was a lot of fun to socialize with a small group of people. Plus its a great opportunity for expats to share information about resources and generally just help each other out. AiMS is on Facebook if you are an American expat and interested in checking us out.

The cookies themselves turned out very good despite a lack of vanilla extract, baking soda, and chocolate chips. It turns out I can buy those thing at the Asian grocery stores (except the chips; I have to make them myself), so I expect the next batch to be even better.

Queens Day in Maastricht

Better late than never, a quick run down of our Queens Day activities.

Konninginnedag (Queen’s Day) is the official birthday of the Netherland’s Queen. While Amsterdam is apparently a zoo for the long weekend (we were warned away by another expat), we decided to spend the holiday in our adopted city of Maastricht. Maybe we’ll do Amsterdam next year.

The main event in Maastricht was the Vrifmarkt, which is a sprawling open air yard sale that took place in the city park. The space was absolutely packed with people selling and buying everything from homegoods to tools to orange hats (Orange is the color and name of the royal family). Blankets of goods were spread out two or three deep on grass. Children played instruments or pretended to be statues for tips. Dan and I spent hours wandering the Vrijmarkt and probably didn’t get to see everything. Of course we bought a few things: an electric drill, some ice trays, and 4 lovely 1920s plates made in Maastricht.

In addition to the Vrifmarkt, Heineken hosted a series of bands on two or three stages around the old part of the city. Since I wasn’t feeling well, we didn’t partake in that. There was a “kinderen vrifmarkt” as well, which was aimed at children selling toys to other children.

Sadly, I can’t really talk about Queen’s Day this year without mentioning the attempted attack on the royal family during a parade. You’ve probably heard all the details, so I’ll just link an article here. It was terrible that such a pleasant day ended this way. Some events in Maastricht, including the Creative Art Vrifmarkt that I wanted to see, were canceled because of the attack.

See some pictures from our Queen’s Day here.

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